The Sanity of Madness
by Tracy Diane Miller
Summary: Is there really a thin line between sanity and madness?


The Sanity of Madness  
  
Summary: Is there really a thin line between sanity and madness? This very short story was inspired by "Bat Masterson."  
  
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whoever created them. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made. Some of the dialogue that appears in this story belongs to the writer of the Early Edition episode "Bat Masterson."  
  
I dedicate this story to Janet (didn't think I'd get this one out, huh? LOL.)  
  
Author: Tracy Diane Miller E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com  
  
The Sanity of Madness  
  
Hooves pounded forcefully into the pavement as horse and rider shared an energy that was pulsating and throbbing, an energy that seemed to be born from a mission that belonged to a bygone era. It was a simple mission, yet a mission that was both genteel and noble: capture the miscreant and protect the good folk.  
  
How oddly misplaced the stranger appeared galloping down the Chicago streets aboard that horse with his stick and derby as he pursued the bicycle thief. He was able to stop the thief, but the criminal fled (sans bicycle).  
  
Chuck and Gary stared in wide-eyed amazement at the stranger. Yet, their amazement exploded into shock and disbelief when the man introduced himself. He was a lawman he revealed.  
  
"You a cop?" Chuck inquired.  
  
No, not at the moment, the stranger admitted, but he had worn a badge in his day. His name was Masterson. William Masterson. Then he uttered the nickname that he was known by, a name which perhaps the whispering winds carried in cherished folklore preserved in dusty history books: Call him Bat. Bat Masterson.  
  
Chuck was incredulous. He felt as if he were in the company of a real life fruitcake (and it wasn't even Christmas!) This guy actually believed that he was Bat Masterson, the sheriff of Dodge City!  
  
But "Bat" scoffed at the cynicism. "Life is full of improbables. Who's to say what is or isn't?" He charged. He looked at Gary as if he sensed a kindred spirit, a man who understood about improbables even if he had a difficult time understanding or explaining them to others.  
  
Gary did understand. Explaining, of course, was another matter.  
  
Yet, something nagged at Gary's gut even as Chuck pronounced this man a lunatic. To Gary, there was something special about the guy. Like a powerful magnet, "Bat" pulled Gary into his world. And Gary wasn't afraid or repulsed not even when he journeyed to "Bat's" home. The Wilkes (the "loony bin" as the cabbie had called it) had been "Bat's" abode for ten years now. It was a place where society could absolve itself of its guilt by arguing that it was fulfilling a joint mission of taking care of people who couldn't take care of themselves and protecting the masses at the same time. In truth it was a place where society deposited its "lost" souls intent on forgetting about them. A place where the self-proclaimed enlightened could mock and ridicule with such epitaphs as "crazy coot." And it was a place where the learned, the medical professional, could lose faith in human nature, in human dignity, and in human potential without so much as blinking an eye.  
  
Maybe it was easy to brand someone as crazy, to demean, hurt, and discard. Maybe it was easy to view someone as "different", to offer and communicate manufactured judgments as if they were truths, and to label and to manipulate others to do the same because by doing that one didn't need to hold the mirror up to oneself and see his own warts.  
  
Maybe it was easy not to have faith in human nature.  
  
But it just didn't add up to Gary. Logically, he wanted to say that the guy was crazy, but somehow the guy wasn't.  
  
Maybe there was a sanity in madness that Gary knew was there but that he just couldn't see for as much as he told himself that "Bat's" situation was none of his business and that there was nothing he could do to help, the more he felt his destiny gravitating towards this man.  
  
And "Bat" was determined, too. This young man with mud green eyes reminded him so much of Wyatt Earp and his instincts had told him to align himself with Earp. Those same instincts told him the same thing about Gary especially now as his mission grew urgent. "Bat" told Gary that his nemesis, Ike Clanton, had returned to town. He needed Gary's help to locate Clanton. He needed for them to "ride together."  
  
But The Paper required that Gary ride alone. So, with an awkward apology, Gary left "Bat" to stop a pool hall fight. Of course, The Paper didn't offer any instructions on how to quell flaring tempers that were perhaps whetted by too much alcohol or a false sense of male bravado. And a good- hearted hero did not mean that he was a skilled peacemaker. Courageously (or foolishly) sandwiching himself between the two Neanderthals, Gary was unceremoniously thrown to the floor just as helpless pasta is thrown against a wall to see if it would stick (why do cooks do that anyway?) He lay on the floor, stunned.  
  
The cavalry arrived; well, maybe not the cavalry, but the undaunted lawman. "Bat" quickly defused the hostilities. Maybe it was because of similar indictments against his own mental stability or maybe it was because he valued compassion over condemnation. He couldn't tell. All he knew was that he couldn't dismiss "Bat" as a nut case to be locked up. He told Chuck that he and "Bat" were "riding together." Chuck, however, feared that Gary had caught whatever "Bat" had. It was more than the fact that "Bat" had saved his life in that pool hall. Gary couldn't give up on "Bat" despite the critics' protestations. He wouldn't.  
  
But Dr. Feinstein wasn't impressed with Gary's loyalty to "Bat". Instead, she viewed him as an enabler of her patient's delusions. After prodding from Gary, she revealed that "Bat's" real name was Mike Killebrew and that he was a decorated Chicago cop who made the mistake of bringing his partner into a fatal ambush. The partner wasn't the only casualty of that tragedy. Out of his guilt and self-loathing, Mike, the lauded cop, allowed Mike Killebrew to "die." Shedding the veneer of his former weak shelf, of Mike Killebrew, Mike comfortably embraced the identity of his boyhood idol, the fearless Bat Masterson.  
  
Fantasy had emerged from reality, but in the end, reality peeked out from fantasy for one last waltz. Ike Clanton...Rico Salazar....Mike Killebrew.....Bat Masterson- the names, the personalities swirled and meshed in a maddening and dramatic conclusion. As "Bat" confronted "Ike" with a gun, it was Mike who hungered for revenge when he cocked that gun at Rico. Gary appealed to Mike not to kill the man, not to allow Mike to suffer anymore.  
  
Maybe it was Gary's words that echoed through "Bat's" subconscious and tunneled through the recesses of his brain so far and so deep that Mike was finally able to find his way out of the darkness.  
  
And maybe there really is a thin line between sanity and madness. Maybe it is a line that is so microscopic that the eye can't see it. Maybe it takes a pure heart to uncloud the vision.  
  
The End. 


End file.
